Can't believe it!

I can’t quite believe it.

For a time now I’ve been talking about an Austrian holiday this summer. We first visited the travel agents on Feb 16th, nearly a month ago. They’ve finally managed to get the trip organised.

The problem hasn’t been the travel agent, although they could have got on the case a bit quicker. In Feb the travel company said they would provisionally reserve the Vienna hotel, with disabled facilities, though they had to check with the Fuschl hotel whether they could provide a stool for the shower. Although they supposedly didn’t have a room with disabled facilities (despite what booking.com reckoned), I thought I could manage provided the shower cubicle was such that a seat of some sort could be put in it for my use.

On Saturday, I decided I could wait no longer & rang the travel agent. They rang the travel company which reckoned they had only just heard back from the hotel. A seat could be provided. They then added they were still trying to sort out the taxi to the Fuschl hotel as I would be able to get on the provided coach for the journey. It was going to be around £200. My response was what taxi? We were intending to hire a car in Salzburg to get us to Fuschl. We would need a car to get out & about with a wheelchair & we didn’t think a village, like Fuschl, would have much choice of hire car, unlike the airport in Salzburg.

Brenda, the girl at the agency rang the company back to check what taxi & all the travel details. The package includes for anyone, disabled or not, flight to Salzburg, taxi to the Salzburg station, train to Vienna, taxi to the hotel, a similar return trip back to the airport, where you join other incoming holidaymakers on the coach to Fuschl. Brenda knows I’m quite happy using a standard car for taxi. She duly told them not to worry about the transport to Fuschl as we were hiring a car at the airport & were quite happy to organise that ourselves separately. All should be well.

But no, now the travel company had to check with the Vienna hotel that they still had the disabled room. So much for the provisional reserving of the room! We waited.

By Monday, Brenda was on to ringing every two hours to chase them up. By the evening she suggested why didn’t they just phone the hotel. The company reckoned they couldn’t do that.

On Tuesday Brenda continued her two-hourly phone calls. By the afternoon she demanded to talk to a supervisor. This really wasn’t good enough. She pointed out that last year they’d had similar problems with this particular company & in the end the client withdrew from the transaction. They were soon about to lose this one too. Still no result.

Last night the Fox & I had a discussion about how much we really wanted the holiday. Much of the gloss was wearing off. I had found a few days break just in Vienna, with another company. Maybe that would do instead. However, we both ended up feeling it seemed a pity to go all that way to Austria & not see some of the fabulous countryside. We love mountains & lakes. Austria seems full of them. We concluded that in the morning I would tell Brenda if things weren’t sorted out today, we were going to abandon the idea of Austria & go somewhere completely different, most definitely with a different travel company.

Imagine my surprise when I rang Brenda this morning, to find she’d just heard from the company. Everything’s been organised satisfactorily. The deposit’s been taken. We’re off to Austria later this year. As I say I can’t quite believe it.